administrator, he had accrued enough back salary over the years to be able to pay his way if he wanted to keep a low profile. This time it wasn’t necessary, because Korallan, a tour ship larger and better appointed and, presumably, less likely to have operational mishaps than the old Kreskhallar, was berthed at Nidia’s Retlin spaceport while its passengers saw the sights, and was due to depart for O’Mara’s final destination in three days’ time. He was already familiar with Retlin from earlier stopovers, but used the time to reaccustom himself since his last leave to shopping and staying in low-ceilinged buildings where he had to bend almost double, and to public- transport vehicles in which he had to either kneel or squat.
On the first night out he discovered that the multi-species dining room contained seven other Earth-human passengers, three females and four males, all of them young. He was given a seat at the end of their table but deliberately avoided joining in their conversation. Unlike the situation in Kreskhallar’s dining room, this time he wasn’t the only male show in town and he had no intention of engaging in a shipboard romance. His life was complicated enough as it was.
He left the ship when it was disembarking at Kelgia’s main spaceport and took a private groundcar into its capital city. The driver was used to Earth-human and many other strange shapes squeezing themselves into its vehicle and politely, for a Kelgian, described items of scenic or architectural interest, not realizing that O’Mara had traveled this way many times and was already familiar with them. Even so, he could not help watching as the sprawling expanse of Kelgia’s largest multi-species hospital complex, looking like an open, beautifully landscaped, and aseptically clean white township, moved slowly past.
Even though he had never actually visited the place, every stretch of parkland, garden, and tree-shaded walkway, as well as the layout of the wards, operating theaters, and staff accommodation in every building, was known to him through the memories of his mind partner, who had trained and served there.
Kledenth, its fur rippling in a combination of impatience and pleasure, was already waiting for him at the entrance to its house when he paid off his driver and began stretching to ease his stiffened leg and back muscles. The Kelgian indicated its own larger and more comfortable vehicle parked a few meters away.
It said, “I had to pull, as you Earth-humans say, a few strings, but I got it. All the equipment you wanted is loaded on board. Now, I suppose you’re in a hurry to use it?”
“Eager to use it, Kledenth,” O’Mara replied, “but not in a tearing hurry. This time I’m not on leave and don’t have to return to Sector General, so hopefully I’m on this world to stay. There is time now, and there will be more later, to talk to you and your family and to thank you yet again for everything you’ve done for us over the years. The debt for saving your fur after that accident on Kreskhallar is more than repaid.”
“Look at the way my fur moves, said Kledenth. “In spite of my age is it not beautiful? It could so easily have been otherwise. My life and successful career subsequent to that accident, my loving lifemate and children, I owe to your specialist knowledge and gross insubordination toward that ship’s captain, and to the skill of the Earth- human female. That debt will never be repaid. But I think you are making one of your stupid and unnecessary Earth-human pretenses, so get into my groundcar and stop wasting time being polite to someone who doesn’t understand the concept.”
Their vehicle was picking up speed and Kledenth’s home was shrinking behind them when it said, “How fares the Joan entity?”
“She congratulates you on the birth of your latest grandchild,” O’Mara replied, “and she says she is well. Reading between the lines I could detect no evidence of serious emotional upsets between her life-mate and herself or their two matured offspring. Her last few letters, as you would put it, were showing happy fur.”
They had traveled more than a mile before Kledenth spoke again.
“Myself I thought it visually quite repulsive,” it said, “but when I showed the shipboard photographs I had taken to an Earthhuman business acquaintance, it said that she was a dish and that you had been a very fortunate man. O’Mara, why didn’t you continue and develop the relationship instead of…
“You know why,” said O’Mara.
“I know,” said the other, “but I think you’re mad.”
O’Mara smiled. “I’m a psychologist.”
“And a very good one,” said Kledenth. “I know that, too. But we’ve arrived. I won’t go in with you because the place makes me feel very uncomfortable. It reminds me of how I might have been.”
The Retreat was a large establishment surrounded by lawns and gardens whose occupants were hidden by a thick screen of aromatic foliage from the view of chance passersby who would otherwise have been seriously distressed by seeing them. O’Mara used his key to open the high, opaque gate and, carrying his luggage in one hand and the equipment container in the other, walked slowly toward the house. He recognized some of the people who were lying curled up on the grass like furry question marks or undulating between the flower beds, because he had long since learned how to tell Kelgians apart. He spoke to them in passing and some of them were feeling well enough to speak back.
Inside the building he climbed the tiny steps of the Kelgian staircase. His room was exactly as he had left it a year earlier except that it was tidy and she had attached sprigs of festive aromatic vegetation to his favorite pictures. The tidiness, they both knew, would be a temporary condition. He dumped his bag on the tiny, lowceilinged room’s single, narrow bed, but held on to the equipment container while he went back downstairs to her office.
There was only one person in the establishment whose feet made a sound like his, so he wasn’t surprised that she was already watching him as he came through the doorway. He placed the container on a side table and, with one hand still resting on it, turned to look back at her. The silence lengthened. Another person might have said hello, or asked if he’d had a good trip or verbally eased the situation in some other fashion, but Kelgians didn’t go in for small talk.
“It will take a few minutes to unpack and assemble,” he said, “after which it will be ready for use. Will you allow me to use it?”
“I don’t know,” said Marrasarah. The small areas of her fur that still retained mobility were spiking in indecision.
“You’ve had a year since my last visit to think about it,” said O’Mara quietly, “and now that I’ve severed all professional contact with Sector General and I plan to stay on Kelgia for the rest of our lives, you can take a little more time to think about it. What’s the problem? Remember, I know your mind as well as you do yourself.”
“You knew my mind,” said Marrasarah, “at the time I donated the Educator tape. In the intervening time that mind has changed, for the better. This was due entirely to your curative therapy and never-ending patience with me. But I, apart from the thoughts and feelings that I have been able to deduce from your words and actions, know nothing of your mind. But that may be enough for me.”
“But it isn’t enough for me,” said O’Mara, gesturing toward the container. “At the hospital I used my influence with Prilicla, who is the only other being who knows about us, to have a tape made of my mind. I have it with me. I can talk to you and try to describe them in words, but I don’t have the fur to show you the true depth of my feelings for you and why I’ve held them over these many years. In a few minutes you could know everything.”
“I am afraid,” she replied, “to know everything?
As he waited for her to go on, even the dead areas of fur seemed to be twitching in her agitation. With one of his own kind he would have moved closer and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but that would not happen here.
During the thirty-odd years that she had been his patient and more than friend there had been no physical contact between them.
“You know everything about me because you carry my donor tape within your mind, she said finally, “but you are forgetting that it is no longer the same mind and you, O’Mara, have changed it. For reasons which you described to me in words and which still don’t make sense to me, you took on my case. It was not through pity for my deformity, you insisted, but because I represent a problem which, because of your growing affection for the personality I had been, you wanted to spend all of your leaves of absence from the hospital, except for the first one when you and the Earthhuman female Joan saved Kledenth’s fur, trying to solve…”
“It was, is, much more than affection,” said O’Mara.
“Don’t interrupt me,” she continued. “I cannot tell a lie, but the truth is complicated and difficult for me to speak. You solved my problem, not by performing a medically impossible miracle on a grossly deformed body but by repairing the wreckage of the mind within. And by working patiently you gave it, and many other minds here, a
